


Just for Tonight

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gin - Freeform, Post-Canon, Rating just for Joan's frustrated bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 13:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18499933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: It would be tonight, of all nights, that Morse turns up. After not seeing him in years. She's just trying to get drunk in peace.





	Just for Tonight

Joan clutches her gin and tonic. It had been a bit of a day, all things considered. She watches the bubbles rise and pop, feeling her shoulders finally slump. They ache.

“Miss Thursday!” The voice is strident, clipped, and all too familiar. Just the icing on the cake.

“Morse,” she answers, morosely, barely looking up. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“In the Lamb and Flag?” he glances around as if he's never seen it before, one hand wrapped around a dark pint of best. “I'd have thought this was more my haunt than yours. Got the impression you didn't much like it.”

“Too many coppers.”

He shrugs, with a smile and a damn twinkle of those blue eyes. “Guilty as charged, I suppose. Are you waiting for-” he cuts himself off, obviously having forgotten her husband's name.

“No.” She drops his gaze and digs a fingernail into the wood of the table, adding to the decades of scarring it's already endured.

He shifts awkwardly for a second, before venturing, “Do you mind if I join you?” Given there is no way of answering that question without being actively rude, Joan sighs, and waves one hand at the stool facing her. He folds himself into it, and hesitates. “So, how is-”

“Did you know Jim Strange liked me?”

He looks whip-lashed by her change of subject, bringing up something over and done with almost a decade ago when Strange tied the knot with his missus. But she'd only found out about his crush a few days ago; her mother, of all people, gossiping about the past over Sunday lunch. While it hadn't been top of her mental thought pile today, it's worked its way up with Morse right in front of her. “Yes,” he answers simply, chasing it with a long swallow of beer.

“He never told me.”

“So?”

“Did you tell him not to tell me?”

“Of course not.” He looks affronted at the idea, but she's winding up now and she can feel a lifetime of regret, of second best, bubbling up like the fizz in her tonic.

“He never said anything because of you.”

He huffs. “I can't be held accountable for his cowardice. Why are you so interested in Strange, anyway?”

“Because I think everyone at the station – if they saw me as anything but my dad's daughter – saw me as _yours_.” Her voice is tight, bitter. She doesn’t like the way it feels. The way it sounds so natural, these days.

“You made it clear enough you weren't that.”

“And yet,” she fumes. “You never told anyone I wasn't. No one gave me a second look.”

“What would you have rather I do?” He leans forward now, flush high in his cheeks. “Take out an ad in the gazette? Joan Thursday turned me down, stand up men, who's turn is it next! Don't be such a hypocrite.” He takes another long pull of his beer. It's half-empty already, and she wonders if he's getting through it to have an excuse to leave. Perversely, she ignores her gin.

“I'm not a-”

“Please. If I'd told anyone – Strange included – to have a go at you, you'd have hated it. But you berate me now that I didn't.”

Deep down, she knows he has a point. That there was no way for him to win in that situation, just like she can't win in this argument. But the taste of what might have been is high in her throat, and stops her dropping it.

“I ended up with-”

“You made that choice-”

“I know!” She can feel hot, frustrated tears gather but blinks furiously. There is no way she's going to cry in front of him. She takes a gulp of her drink too fast, ice shifting and hitting her teeth. She coughs. He is studying her. He's still pink, but composed now, ire tucked away in deference to the interesting puzzle she presents. Intimating that all is not well with her white collar catch, paraded around before the biggest ceremony Thursday could afford.

“What's happened?”

She picks at her dress, too fancy for their surroundings. “The kid's are with Paul's mother. I told her I had a high school reunion tonight. All so I could come and get drunk in a pub on my own. The bloody _Lamb and Flag,_ ” she snorts. “Of all places.”

“Miss-”

“Fucks sake, Morse!” she spits across the table, voice a little shrill and hating herself for it. “Call me Joan or I'll start calling you Endeavour!” She buries her head in her hands, feeling the fight leech out of her with her outburst. The buzz of the pub continues, but he's quiet. 

“Joan,” he reaches out and grasps her hands, pulling them away from her face. “What's happened?”

“He's always away,” she starts, looking down at where they're joined, his fingers cradling hers. She realises how inappropriate it looks, if anyone were to see them. Doesn't care enough to pull back, selfish for his warmth. “I thought coppers were bad enough, at the office all hours, out all night, never sure if they were going to make it back.” She quirks a half smile at him. “Running off on their hunches at three in the morning if they solved the mystery. Turns out businessmen are even worse. Foreign travel.”

He looks like he doesn't quite know what to say, and extricates one hand to take a swig. She tightens her grip on the other. He's down to the dregs now, and she wonders if he'll offer another, or leave.

“He's having an affair,” she says softly. “A blonde lady named Emma. She's pretty. He keeps a picture of her in his wallet, underneath the one of me, Laura and Sammy.”

He's too used to revelations to exclaim, but she can hear the slight intake of breath, before: “I'm sorry.”

She shrugs. “I knew it wasn't perfect. It never was, even at the beginning. I thought that's what real love was, though. Working at something together. Building a life. Realising that didn't mean living a fairy tale.”

“Wrong person to ask,” Morse says, ruefully.

“Maybe.” In the quiet, Joan lets him go, and finishes her gin though it's watery with melted ice. “Maybe you were the right one.”

“Maybe,” he echoes. “Long time ago now.”

“Too long,” she agrees. “Too much water under that bridge of sighs.” Too much baggage, on her end. She's not who she was. Older. Wiser, maybe. Morse is staring at the table, and she takes the opportunity to really look at him for the first time in years. His face is a little more lined, but otherwise he's much as he was. She wants to slide her fingers through his hair, she realises. Wants to kiss his crows feet, curl him to her in a hug. She wonders when he last had a hug. Its probably been a while.

“Unless you take a punt.” The double meaning of him extending her metaphor hits her in the stomach, making her simultaneously gasp and laugh.

“Are you? Taking a punt?”

“I am an Oxford boy.”

She groans, covers her eyes with a hand once more, but can't help herself chuckling. “Morse,” she admonishes, seeing in her mind their dance starting up again, knows as much as she wants it, that it's dangerous. That the steps are maybe too well trodden for anything off-script or new. That they'll end up, days or weeks or months down the line a little more bruised, a lot more broken, again. “Where are we going with this?”

“The Tavern?”

“Are you inviting me on a pub crawl?”

He looks serious for a second. “Do you have anywhere to be? Just for tonight?” He grasps her hand in his, pulls her upright. She fizzes with the altitude, unsure if its born from gin or recklessness. Finds she doesn't much mind as his smile reappears, so rare. Just for tonight.

“No,” she smiles, scooping up her handbag. She tucks it under one arm, allowing him to take her other.

“Then my lady- Joan,” he corrects. “The delights of Oxford await.” He exaggerates a bow. “After you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> These two just keep arguing and reconciling in my head... you can decide if it this time round they last :)


End file.
